Naming Conventions for Naming Things

In a recent email exchange with a colleague, I have been discussing two aspects of metadata: naming conventions and taxonomies. Just as a reminder, “taxonomy” refers to the practice of organization and classification, and in this context it refers to the ways that concepts are defined and how the real-world things referred to by those concepts are logically grouped together. After pondering the email thread, which was in reference to documenting code lists and organizing the codes within particular classes, I was reminded of a selection from Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking Glass, at the point where the White Knight is leaving Alice in her continued journey to become a queen.

At that point, the White Knight proposes to sing Alice a song to comfort her as he leaves, and in this segment they discuss the song he plans to share:

Any of you who have been following the discussion of “default semantics” in the XTM group at LinkedIn should appreciate this post.

Your default semantics are very unlikely to be my default semantics.

What I find hard to believe is that prior different semantics are acknowledged in one breath and then a uniform semantic is proposed in the next.

Seems to me that prior semantic diversity is a good sign that today we have semantic diversity. A semantic diversity that will continue into an unlimited number of tomorrows.

Yes?

If so, shouldn’t we empower users to choose their own semantics? As opposed to ours?

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on Wednesday, July 10th, 2013 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Names, Semantics.
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